


what they remember

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Character Studies (Dragon Age) [13]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emerald Graves, Epistolary, Gen, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 03:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17993981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Varric writes letters to his friends, even during his travels with the Inquisition.  Sometimes, he just has to.  Varric + Merrill friendship, smidgen of Hawke x Varric.





	what they remember

Dear Daisy, **  
**

I hope you’re staying safe back in Kirkwall.  My contacts tell me the alienage is getting better every day, and I know that’s your doing.  It’s good shit you’re doing there.

Sorry for not writing back before now.  I know you and Hawke and Bethany have been busy.  Shit, Hawke and Bethany were away from Kirkwall so long you’re probably having to keep  _them_  from getting lost.  

Take care of Min for me, all right?

I had another reason for writing you.  I’m in the Emerald Graves.  Yeah, those Emerald Graves.  

From what I knew of the place before coming here, I expected nothing but noble pleasure homes and niceties everywhere.  We just came back from the Winter Palace, so I figured this place would be more of the same, the home-away-from-home version for the hoity-toity of the Orlesian gentry.

It’s not like that.

You talked in Kirkwall about the People.  About belonging.  Even when your clan kicked you out, even when you got lost in Kirkwall’s filthy streets, you never stopped talking about them.  

Let’s just say… I never knew exactly what you meant.  Dwarves stick together, it’s true, but it’s like unwilling links in a chain.  We stick together because you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy in the Guild and that’ll get you what you need.  Or because you know a guy who’ll knife a guy who’ll knife a guy, and you know how it goes.  So your talk of the People… no offense, Daisy, it sounded more than a little out there.

This place, though. Sure, they’ve some villas here, shit paid for by Orlesian nobles with too much money and too little sense.  There’s paths and the occasional abandoned fortress.  Monuments to the Chantry being a bunch of dicks.  It’s not all wild land.

But the  _trees_ , Daisy.  They tower, emerald and peridot and all the shades between.  They make the few buildings here look like playthings, like interlopers.  You know the trees will take it all back eventually; you know they’ll run it all over with green, green, green.  And you’ll recall that I hate being outside any more than I have to – and yes my nose runs here, and my eyes water – but these trees _mean_  something, and even this irreverent dwarf can feel it.  

They remember the People.

When Kirkwall’s okay again – as okay as it ever is – I’ll come back here with you, Daisy.  Me and Hawke.  

That’s a promise.

– V.


End file.
